C# classes created from XML with XSD.EXE

June 07, 2012 Tools XML C#

The XSD.EXE tool that is included in Visual Studios command line tools is a bit flawed.

Running the command first generating an XSD scheme out of your XML file and then creating classes from it:

xsd MyXml.xml
xsd MyXml.xsd /classes /n:MyNameSpace.Serialization

First of all, most likely your array elements will be declared as multi dimensional arrays. If so you'll end up with a "Unable to generate a temporary class" exception and plenty of "error CS0030: Cannot convert type 'Data[]' to 'Data'". (Data is an example return type, yours will probably be named something else, Row is an example element name.)

The code in the generated class would look something like this:

[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlArrayItemAttribute("Data", typeof(Data), IsNullable=false)]
public Data[][] Row ...

If you actually use multi dimensional arrays, it should really be using typeof(Data[]) instead, like this:

[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlArrayItemAttribute("Data", typeof(Data[]), IsNullable=false)]
public Data[][] Row ...

But if you're just looking for normal one dimensional arrays it's the return type that needs to be flattened to Data[] instead of Data[][]:

[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlArrayItemAttribute("Data", typeof(Data), IsNullable=false)]
public Data[] Row ...

Read the original solution post here.

The second problem you may face is if your XML doesn't contains namespaces. It would occur like "<yourrootelement xmlns=""> was not expected.". To fix this, remove the empty Namespace parameters from the XmlRootAttribute in your generated classes. You'll find some alternative fixes for this problem here.

C# classes created from XML with XSD.EXE

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